I Just Read About That…

 SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: February 2, 2025] The Aquanaut

I like Dan Santat (his instagram is fun) and I like his drawing style.  I’ve read a lot of books that he has illustrated but I don’t know that I’ve read all that many books written by him.

This book was pretty weird, but the story was a lot of fun.

The story opens with a man getting killed at sea (yea, pretty shocking).  The man turns out to be the father of the main character, Sophia.

Sophia’s father and her uncle had created a marine theme park called Aqualand.  They were scientists and they wanted to bring the world of the sea to everyone.  But there’s not a lot of money in that so investors kept insisting that they add more excitement to Aqualand.  And soon it was a far cry from what they’d envisioned.

But then one day, an Aquanaut walks out of the sea.  The aquanaut is in a diving suit–the one that her father had used!–It causes quite a stir, obviously, but it has one goal: to find Aqualand.  It’s especially funny when you realize that the suit is being “driven” by three sea creatures.

I enjoyed the story well enough but it did leave a lot of questions, mostly to do with the plot.  There’s no real explanation or even introduction to the sea creatures. And after reading the afterword where Santat talks about how personal the story was to him, I wanted to like it more.  But instead I mostly enjoyed the illustrations and the overall environmental themes and vibe of the book.